Carver Lake Beach is the swimming beach inside Carver Lake Park, a City of Woodbury park at 3175 Century Avenue South in the southwest corner of Woodbury, Minnesota, near Interstate 494. The City of Woodbury Parks and Recreation Department runs it. The beach sits on the southeast shore of Carver Lake, a 49-acre lake about 36 feet deep at its deepest point, ringed by wooded hills. The Minnesota DNR lists the park in its Fishing in the Neighborhood program and describes the water as fairly clear.

The park entrance is on Century Avenue South, close to I-494, and the park is signed from the road. The lot closest to the water is the beach and picnic lot on the south side of the lake; a separate lot near the entrance serves the bike park and mountain bike trailhead. Parking is free and so is the park itself, with no entrance or day-use fee. From the parking area the lake is downhill, and visitors have described two paths to the sand, one steep and signed as such and one with a gentler grade, so pick the second if you are hauling a cooler or a stroller.

The swim area is a sand beach with a small sand play feature for kids, and swimming is limited to the designated beach. There are no lifeguards. Swimming is allowed from Memorial Day to Labor Day, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily, and the city expects adults to watch children closely and to put weak swimmers in life jackets. Being a small Minnesota lake, the water warms through June and is usually at its most comfortable from July into August. A restroom building with showers stands right behind the beach, along with a drinking fountain, a sandy nautical-themed playground and two sand volleyball courts. On hot weekends the beach fills up early.

The main thing that shuts this beach down is bacteria. The city samples the water through the summer, and when E. coli comes back above state guidelines the beach closes until follow-up tests are clean. That tends to happen after heavy rain, when runoff carries goose droppings and other waste into the lake, and it has made local news more than once. Algae can also close it. Check the City of Woodbury's Carver Lake Park page or call Parks and Recreation at 651-714-3583 before making the drive. Outside the swim season there is no swimming at all. Pets, glass and fires are not allowed on the sand, and fishing is done from the boardwalk or pier, not the beach.

The rest of the park is worth the trip on its own. A paved path and a long boardwalk follow the shoreline, there is a fishing pier on a lake holding bluegill, crappie, largemouth bass and northern pike, and a large picnic shelter near the beach can be rented from mid-April to mid-October. Carver Lake is also a popular mountain bike destination: a 5.5-mile singletrack loop, built by the city with Minnesota Off-Road Cyclists and maintained by MORC volunteers, starts near the entrance, next to a bike park with a tot track, pump track and jump line.